Saturday, April 12, 2008

Street Smarts for 21st century Pilgrims by Fritz Springmeier

From http://poweredbychrist.homestead.com/files/articles/manna20.htm




SPIRITUAL MANNA in the post 9-11 Spiritual Desert,

no. 20, Nov. 15, 2001
Entitled, "Street smarts for 21st century pilgrims" by Fritz Springmeier

You are walking on rocky ground through hostile territory. We are not of this
world JN 17:18. Our true citizenship is in heaven 1 PTR 2:11. The rest of
the world is still worshipping demons (cf. RV 9:10). Man's biggest threat is
another man! In fact, Christ did not come to make peace with the hostile
natives. "Suppose ye that I am come to give peace on earth? I tell you, Nay;
but rather division:" (Christ quoted at LK 12:51.) There is a war between good
and evil. Accept it. Christ knew a conspiracy was out to kill him. Yeshua
said, "Why do you seek to kill me?" (JN 7:19) But they mocked his "conspiracy
theory", and told him he must have a demon for thinking that someone would
want to kill him. Christ also knew that typically the nice people get run over
by the aggressive wild natives out on the take. The children of this world are
in their generation wiser than the children of light LK 16:8. (If there
wasn't an eternity to consider, the children of this world would be wiser. So
Christ can honestly say, that for their own time period, the ungodly are more
clever, more wiser, than those pilgrims who are living godly lives.)

What I believe eludes many people is that there is a streak of practicality
in what the Bible teaches. "Discretion shall preserve thee, understanding
shall keep thee." PRV 2:11 I would say that street smarts would fall under
discretion and understanding.
Listen to these words of scriptural advice:

· "A gift in secret pacifieth anger: and a reward in the bosom strong
wrath." PRV 21:14

· After the story of a steward who wrote off debts to his boss in order to
gain friendships with the debtors, Christ advised "And I say unto you, Make to
yourselves friends of the mammon of unrighteousness; that, when ye fail, they
may receive you into everlasting habitations." LK 16:9

· "And if any man will sue thee at the law, and take away thy coat, let him
have thy cloak also." MT 5:40

What we are being told is figure out some way to make peace and good will
with people who could do you a great deal of harm. Be affable and make friends
with these dangerous people. As they say, keep your friends close and your
enemies even closer. The Word of God also teaches us to not show our cards. In
other words, be friendly but let the other person tell all his secrets. You
show wisdom in realizing the potential danger that people pose. Some godly
people have a natural flair for disarming strangers and getting strangers to
talk about themselves, and manage without anyone detecting it, to avoid
talking a great deal about themselves. Cisco has had a natural flair for
this. She has the ability to approach any one, mind-control programmers,
handlers, alphabet soup men, drunks, and other obnoxious characters and disarm
them with her charm. They end up doing most of the talking, but she is really
subtly controlling the conversation. If we are to pacify people by giving, one
of the ways we can give is to give attention, respect, love and time to these
dangerous worldly people. Even cobras can be charmed.

We've been discussing street-smart godly behavior that should become part of
our makeup. Along with Biblical wisdom we need to add specific revelation from
God. Now there is a close relationship between intuition, sensitivity and
spirituality. Let God lead your heart. We don't worship a corpse; so don't
forget your relationship to God. Responding to God is responsibility.

Hold fast to your faith like a tiger defending his dinner. Hold fast to your
pure heart. You see Christendom stresses the gift God gave, and many people
will grab anything free they can get, but that doesn't mean they will be
brought into a close relationship with the gift giver. The pure in heart are
the ones that God walks with. 1 John 3:2-3 talks about both the gift and how
we can be in close relationship to the gift giver: "And He himself is the
propitiation for our sins, and not for ours only but for the whole world. Now
by this we know that we know Him, if we keep His commandments."

Do you catch that? He has gifts for all, but we know Him if we keep His
commandments. And now I'm going to say something radical-God is not a
corpse-He still leads His people, and we follow His commandments by listening
to His voice.

"Ask, and it will be given to you; seek, and you will find; knock, and it will
be opened to you. For everyone who asks receives, and he who seeks finds, and
to him who knocks it will be opened to you." MT 7:7-8, cf LK 11:9.

Don't worry about making great plans for God, or thinking great thoughts. "Has
not God made foolish the wisdom of the world?" 1 COR 1:20. If you really
want to be on fire about life, hear God's plans for your life yourself. I
wouldn't even try to convince you what the details of God's plans are; you
have to hear for yourself to have that full assurance. Abraham learned to
trust God by walking in faith, not from reading the Bible or reading some
book.

You and I are to mobilize our brothers and sisters. We are to arouse, persuade
and demonstrate the teachings of Christ. We don't need popularity to lead. We
don't need great plans. We don't need to find capable leaders. We need to have
that childish awe of exploration and discovery towards God's plans. Toward
hearts like this God will show Himself strong 2 CHR 16:9.

Gideon was such a man. He came from an insignificant family of low means.
Gideon didn't try to be clever; he tried to discover what God's plan was. He
sincerely wanted to know, and put out a fleece to be sure he was hearing
correctly. You may have to test the spirits. Not all shiny glowing angels are
good ones.

As we stick to our mission, we'll have problems get in the way. Generally, we
will want to persevere and overcome them. If we are on a wrong course, the
problem may be for our own safety. A disease to change our lifestyle. A missed
trip to save our life. As you know Balaam, on a wrong mission, had his mode of
transportation stop. His big-eared donkey refused to budge and he began
kicking her. Finally, the angel, whom the donkey could see, but Balaam hadn't
seen, told him to quit kicking the donkey, because the donkey had just saved
his life.

Like Gideon, we need to weed out the weak who will stampede in fear. A small
hard-core group is less of a target, and has more flexibility. Don't be
worldly and think big figures. Think Godly and think about spiritually pure
hearts and those who are brave. Be bold, Christ was bold. While I hesitate to
decide the perfect way, someone else will have already charged in and done it.
We do this with ourselves too. We say, when I am purer I'll do such and such
for Christ. When Jesus came most everyone was considered impure. Women had
periods. People ate the wrong foods, and had the wrong occupations. But Yeshua
treated everyone as an equal and everyone felt good being around him. Although
the army keeps working hard to turn out aloof tyrants as officers,
historically, the men have always loved officers who got in the muck with them
and related to them. Yeshua, rather than using people as stepping-stones to
his own glory, wanted to take as many people to the top with him as possible.

Nor must we think God will do all the work in enemy territory. Gideon fought
all night, ran all the next day, and then fought all night the second night.
Many Christians fall down here, they expect God will do everything, preferably
a microwave miracle, and they equate laziness with faithfulness and
spirituality.

Another thing Gideon did was use the element of surprise. We need to
constantly surprise the World Order. Show up where we are not expected. The
alphabet soup people love to monitor people, discover their routines and then
take advantage of those routines.

God's battle plan included psychological warfare. Don't be afraid to take
advantage of your enemy's fears if God calls you to do that. God created
Gideon's band of hard-core fighters (JUD 7:2,4) and He can do it again if He
so desires. God wanted faithful and alert men. Praise the good Lord that
Gideon was not fatalistic like so many today, or that he didn't expected God's
miracle not to include hard work on his own part.

Gideon had to step out of his comfort zone, and make personal sacrifices. You
will possibly also be asked to do this. Are you afraid of the enemy? Perhaps
for now you should go home (cf. DT 20:8) If you are afraid, I understand, for
the Word of God has predicted these times will be "a time of trouble, such as
never was." DN 12:1b We are going through what the prophet Amos called a
sifting process of futility, where world leaders sift through all kinds of
answers, stumbling around like blind men groping for something that works.
Embracing these blind leaders of the blind is not going to save anyone. They
are offering up imaginary lifeboats and sinking lifeboats. God is now allowing
the beast to "devour the entire earth" (cf. DN 7:23)

In the streets they call it a bulls-t detector, whatever you want to call it,
you'd better have a good one working, because if the elect can be deceived,
they will be. This is Satan's big day. He'll use miracles and anything to con
us. They love to con us of the elect, by telling us what we want to hear.

Satan is terribly doublebinded. He must keep his very complex system running
on track to have everything in shape to rule. His control mechanisms are
touchy and are not running perfectly. He is putting out fires all over the
world. If he takes over the world without his intricate mechanisms working,
his control mechanisms may well break down, and things are far shakier than he
is telling his followers.

So what have we discussed? Our daily walk is in enemy territory, and we
should act accordingly with street smarts. To deal with the bigger picture,
we will find it more gratifying if we discover God's plan. God still leads His
people. It's a terrible time, but evil is in the process of self-destructing,
so take heart.



Forward to Spiritual Manna 21

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